For Alpha and Jam, 2018 was a year of
revolutionising the Digital Out-Of-Home subsector beyond the shores of Nigeria,
to give hope to an OOH industry that had undergone a lot of strain in recent
times.

Establishing its frontrunner position
in the OOH sector as an agency that is in tune with global trends digitally and
in the market, it launched Candle, an innovative smart platform that powers
DOOH screens and has the ability to interpret data, converts it to meaningful
results like OTS, GRP, Number of Impressions, Unique Reach, Repeat Visit,
Campaign Conversion among others.

Candle has brought forward the future
of DOOH in Africa, and indeed in the world. This innovative technology is
indigenous to Nigeria as it is conceptualized by young dynamic Nigerians at
Alpha & Jam captained by Samuel Ajiboye, its Managing Director. Candle is also a content creation engine
focused on creating out-of-home experiences that engage. It does three basic
things. First, it runs on big screens. Then, it has its own media player which
is a real deal. A media player is what makes it possible to do everything on
the Madison.

It also interprets data and converts
it to meaningful results that make sense to a media buyer like OTS, GRT, number
of impressions, among others. The agency leveraged on this digital innovation
for brands, agencies and businesses it worked for last year.

Last year also, the agency
constructed the iconic Madison, Nigeria’s first fully digital self-intelligence
LED screen, which it strategically sited at the Ikoyi Link Bridge connecting
High Net worth Individuals, in Ikoyi to the upper middle class in Lekki. Standing
proudly in all its 4000 megapixels of glory, the Madison is easily the most
iconic premium LED screen in Africa. It takes Digital Out-Of-Home to another
level by becoming the first experiential screen that can engage the audience on
the go. It comes with an innovative ‘Eko light,’ a beam of light located at the
apex of the screen, shooting four kilometres of skylight into the night sky
making it visible from almost every part of Lagos.

One of the distinguishing features of
the iconic LED screen is that it is powered by Candle which lends it
self-intelligence ability. With Candle, the Madison is able to give real-time
socio-economic audience profiling through its CEGR (Car Economic Grading Ratio)
proprietary solution. This indicates if an HNI or a middle-income earner is
looking at your ads.

Monitoring the Madison, using Candle for advertisers is as easy as taking a stroll in the park. In a chat last year with Brand Communicator, Samuel explained more about Candle and how it works on a board like the Madison. “Scheduling for Candle is cloud-based. You can upload your campaign online and see it go live. What makes monitoring using Candle unique is that, unlike what is commonly used, it captures both the board and the surrounding so you get to see the audience and the screen in real time. You get real-time reports and live feeds of what is going on. The client has access to all these. For instance, you can upload your ad from Korea in Lagos and monitor it from the comfort of space over there.

“It is a self-service platform that
is as easy to run as a Facebook ad. Once you can run a Facebook ad, you can run
an ad on the Madison or any board that is powered by the Candle. You can create
an account on candle, select the boards you want to run and run your campaign.
It is a programmatic platform for all DOOH campaigns. This makes it easy to
justify OOH investments and even optimise it. As a screen owner, imagine been
able to control your site remotely. Imagine the possibility of turning on or
off your screen and generator, gauging fuel, control calibration all from the
comfort of your location irrespective of the distance of the site? That is an
innovation that comes with Candle,” he had explained.

Powered by the Candle, some
interesting innovative campaigns were run on the Madison in 2018. To make sure
Nigerian football fans do not miss out on actions at the Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup
perhaps by virtue of been stuck in the traffic, Coca-Cola, one of the sponsors
of the Nigerian team at the soccer tournament, covered the matches in real
time.

Strategically engaging the Madison,
the cola brand interacted with football fans while keeping them abreast of real
time events in Russia, although for technical and regulatory reasons, no board
beamed the World Cup live. But unlike other boards that showed scores
intermittently, Coca Cola using the Madison, kept people up to date. It showed
ball possession, who kicked what, the timing, goals scored, who provided
assists, as well as goals scored in real time. In addition, when a player scored
a goal, a Coca-Cola moved on the screen and the name of the scorer and the
person who assisted was displayed.

This feature arguably made the
Madison the first real time DOOH screen engagement platform in Nigeria. For
instance, there were about 3026 cars on the Ikoyi link when Super Eagles’
Victor Moses scored against the Argentina’s Albicelestes in Nigeria’s second
group stage match in Russia. The excitement that followed the goal from that
location will convince anyone without knowledge of the Madison that the match
was streamed live around the bridge.

The Madison was able to do this using a special component of the Candle called BrandFREEZE. BrandFreeze makes it possible for brands to assemble their number of insertions for the whole day into a single duration and use at a strategic period, perhaps a product launch, it wishes to utilize it. The scheduling of the Candle is dynamic such that you can change timing to suit brand’s needs. The brand can control the number of exposure because, at the end of the day, there is a maximum amount of exposure it can have in a day.

To further engage Nigerian fans, the
brand deployed the #Shareacokewithoursupereagles campaigns to give fans the
platform to show their love and support for the players and the national team.
The campaign which ran on the Madison is a real-time Coca-Cola DOOH Instagram
feed display that showed in real-time Instagram photos people uploaded with the
hashtag. Those images were displayed irrespective of the locations and MADISON
upped the ante by bringing fans together to a screen in support of the national
team.

In just two hours, without any form
of digital promotion, over 400 Instagram uploads in 2hours before Nigeria’s
game, were recorded. The board also deployed a match time countdown to further
fire up the hype leading to every Nigerian game. The two teams playing against each other are
placed next to a refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola.

Another disruptive campaign Alpha
& Jam ran last year was during the Ramadan fast. At this time, one of the
most important times of the day for Muslims is the time for Iftar- the evening
meal with which Muslims end their daily fast at sunset. Interestingly, the time
for Iftar is not always at Seven o’clock as erroneously believed. It
fluctuates. Working collaboratively with the brand, the agency came up with a
time content which it displayed on the Madison giving people the exact time for
Iftar.

Yet another campaign the agency ran
was on the Moet Grand Day event campaign done in collaboration with Phd Nigeria
and beamed on the Madison on June 9, 2018. The Moet Grand Day event is like the
biggest premium party in the world. The idea is to celebrate success every hour
at an ongoing party in 80 countries of the world. The concept is also to make a
toast every hour-to life, success, etc. The brand was looking for how to
creatively and dynamically make it possible.

Ajiboye said doing that with a
Madison powered Candle was easy. “What we did for the brand was to create
a BTL timer where the internet time was fixed, so they can count down to an
hour. As the countdown was going on at the various venues of the event, we were
counting down at the Madison screen. People got to know there was an ongoing
event and that at every hour, a toast was being made.

“This created an effect where
people felt they were missing out on something interesting. It was an ad that
was dynamically doing something. Interestingly, Nigeria is the 5 countries
among the 80 to actually display this on a billboard. It was a great concept
planned out with PHD media on how creative the Madison could be put to
use.”

The Candle is unique in the sense
that it is not exclusive to the Madison alone. It can power other DOOH screens
as well. Samuel said the doors are open for collaboration with brands as well
as agencies to push the frontiers on customer engagement leveraging on the
technology and innovation the Candle brings.

“We are going to expand as fast as
possible. Candle is free, not for sale. It just like Uber-It never asks the
driver to pay money before they download the Uber app. It makes you make more
money as a taxi rider and that is what Candle does too. Just like Uber, Candle
does not control your Screen. We have been into partnerships with some agencies
and together we have done great works to the satisfaction of clients. We will
like to collaborate with agencies in such a way that we aid their pitching
business using what the Candle can do on screens. We also want to go into
brainstorming sessions and bring to the table how Candle can make a whole lot
of difference to campaigns.”

This year, industry watchers are
looking out for more innovations and campaigns from the stables of this young
agency. It is only January yet; indeed the year is sprawled out for the taking.